


To Be Alone

by dragon_zena



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, i dontknow if it counts as angst but i'll tag it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26258743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragon_zena/pseuds/dragon_zena
Summary: "'It's not easy feeling alone,' he says, and he knows that this is true, not from words, but from a lifetime of experience. He knows that it is true because he saw it reflected in the mirrors of university bathrooms after a presentation. Heard it in the dwindling dialogue followed by someone walking away in the middle of a conversation. The emptiness of a house, many houses. One from memories of childhood, long abandoned. One with sturdy, oaken doors. Both equally isolating."Or, Carlos's relationship with being alone.
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	To Be Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Working Title: Epic Carlos Loneliness Compilation
> 
> So basically...I just wanted to yell about Carlos because, well. This man can fit so much love and projection in him. Title is from "To Be Alone" by Hozier, because everything gets either a Hozier lyric or a Mitski lyric for a title.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

"It's not easy feeling alone," he says, and he knows that this is true, not from words, but from a lifetime of experience. He knows that it is true because he saw it reflected in the mirrors of university bathrooms after a presentation. Heard it in the dwindling dialogue followed by someone walking away in the middle of a conversation. The emptiness of a house, many houses. One from memories of childhood, long abandoned. One with sturdy, oaken doors. Both equally isolating.

Carlos says that being alone is not easy, and he lives this truth for ten years in a desert otherworld, and then again after a reboot of his timeline when no one even remembers him.

* * *

He's a scientist, so he turns it over for quite a while—rotates the idea of loneliness in his mind, scrutinizes it against the backdrop of his own emotions.

_ One-fifth of the American population describes themselves as lonely. Only about twenty percent of adults have a single friend, and another twenty-five percent have no one.  _

_ Loneliness, as defined by Perissinotto: the discrepancy between one's desired relationships and one's actual relationships.  _

When Carlos was an undergrad, he took a loneliness assessment, the same curiosity of a green psychologist making attempts at diagnosing everyone they know. There were only three questions:

  * _How often do you feel that you lack companionship—hardly ever, some of the time, or often?_


  * How often do you feel left out—hardly ever, some of the time, or often?


  * How often do you feel isolated from others—hardly ever, some of the time, or often?



Carlos had answered “often” for all three. And then he had closed out of the tab, rested his chin in his hands, and sat in bed with crossed legs for about an hour.

* * *

_ Lonely individuals, according to Cacioppo et. al, face impairment in emotional control, as well as decision-making and social interaction, ironically. _

It does not surprise Carlos that loneliness disrupts aptitude in social interaction. How are you supposed to be good at something you’ve never experienced before? Carlos gets wrapped up in his head and lays everything out on the table before the other person has a chance to speak. His brain moves so fast that by the time anyone else sits at the table, he’s getting up and making his way out of the door. There are so many things that Carlos wants to do, to explore, to learn and decipher.

This does not even take into the account that Carlos does not like to be touched at times, that he prefers concrete evidence, to understand the whole of what is going on around him.

_ They also tend to be more impulsive than their more socially-aligned peers. _

Lonely individuals experience an impulsiveness that their counterparts might not, muses Carlos, years after a run-in with a city of tiny people under a bowling alley, because their counterparts feel as though they have more to lose. In that first year, there was not much to lose. There was Carlos, and there was his team of scientists, and there was his work.

(And there was Cecil, but he hadn’t accepted that, yet. How could he have, when Cecil had been the first one to care enough to listen to the entirety of his rambling voicemails, or to honor the fact that he had stayed around for a year? How could he have, when there was no precedent?)

_ Loneliness is not having no one, however. Loneliness is a misinterpretation of one’s social relationships. Lonely individuals, according to a study, tend to feel misunderstood, more likely to attribute social problems to others, as though they are giving their all in a relationship. _

And, yes, Carlos can say that he is not blameless; he’s pushed people away, before, and he can be difficult, sometimes, as well. He’s put his own work before himself, even, forgotten to eat and sleep. So he knows that he does the same to other people, even accidentally. That does not make him unlovable or unavailable.

_ Loneliness is not a clinical disorder, but it does put individuals at risk of depressive symptoms, high blood pressure, disordered sleeping, lowered immune resistance, and an increase in stress hormones. _

He gets snappy, in the desert otherworld. He’s there for years, and nothing is going right, and his science is failing him, and he gets frustrated because one moment he thought that he belonged, finally, in a scientifically interesting town with scientifically interesting people, and the next, he realized that he didn’t belong there, that he was not considered a citizen, at least not yet. 

So he snaps at Kevin. Because he’s lonely, again. And it’s not easy, being alone.

But then he takes a moment. Realizes that he’s here, but he’s not alone. Thinks about his boyfriend, makes his way through the dog park.

Figures that home is the antithesis of loneliness. Figures that Carlos knows where home is.

* * *

"It's not easy being alone," he says, and it's not. But then Carlos is dialing the number of the local radio host, for professional reasons--and then for personal reasons, and he's—Cecil's—kind and handsome and actively cares about his passions. 

And he's sitting next to him on an old car, and Cecil's head is resting on Carlos's shoulder, and Carlos's hand is on his thigh, and it clicks.

"It's not easy being alone," Carlos says, but then he's moving in with Cecil, and he's saying his vows to him, kissing him soundly. He's adopting a beautiful baby boy with Cecil, and then a puppy named Aubergine.

And it's not easy being alone, of course it's not and has not ever been. But within a year, Carlos didn't have to be alone, anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed; I know that it was super short, but I've been trying to get more comfortable with posting short fics instead of forcing myself to write long pieces that drain my creativity. Sometimes its fine to post pieces that you don't think you're gonna work on anymore! I'm not _super_ proud of this one, but it's better here than being left to gather dust in my gdocs. 
> 
> MP100/TMA fans, I am still working on all of those WIPs, I swear. College started back up and I have a job, so it'll be...rough for a little bit. But I'm still working on them!
> 
> If you guys wanna yell about literally anything, my twitter is @Dragon_Zena, and my less-used tumblr is @dragon-zena! 
> 
> Comments and kudos mean a lot ! Thank you for reading <3!


End file.
